All Aboard – a short devotional

Click picture to view on Amazon (affiliate link)

Isaiah 55:8-9 – Indeed, My plans are not like your plans, and My deeds are not like your deeds, for just as the sky is higher than the earth, so My deeds are superior to your deeds and My plans superior to your plans.

I read a book to my oldest kids when they were very young titled Train to Somewhere. Of all of the children’s books I’ve read with my children through these twenty-five years of parenting, no other book has stuck with me like this one. In it, Eve Bunting took the readers on a journey across the U.S. on an orphan train. The ride was punctuated by stops all along the railway during which the orphans were taken onto the train platform and lined up for inspection by potential adoptive parents. Stop after stop, the number of children climbing back aboard the train got smaller and smaller. Pickens, as you can imagine, were slim by the last stop. To be honest, I don’t remember the specifics, but this one sentence about that last train stop has repeated in the story of my own life many times since reading it: “Sometimes what you get turns out to be better than what you thought you wanted in the first place.”

PONDER: Have you noticed the same truth in the pages of your own story? In the comments, share one or two times when what you got was better than what you thought you wanted. Are you thankful that you didn’t get your way?

All Aboard is one of thirty devotionals I’ve been asked to write this year as part of a friend’s year-long devotional project. I look forward to taking this step outside of my comfort zone by sharing what the Lord is showing me. My hope is that you will find a place here where you feel comfortable in taking that step with me.